In the production of video content, special effects are used in order to provide a plurality of pieces of information, produce variations in screen changeover, and protect privacy on the screen, for example. There are two methods in which these special effects are performed: in one method, a video signal on which special effects have been performed is recorded to a recording medium; and, in the other method, an original video signal is recorded without change while a special effect processing procedure is also recorded in which the recorded original video signal is processed in accordance with the recorded processing procedure at the time of reproduction, thereby reproducing the special effects. The latter is especially referred to as a nondestructive editing in which editing is performed by use of a software application such as QuickTime (hereafter referred to as QT). QT is a software program for managing various data along with the time axis and is an OS extended capability for reproducing and synchronizing moving image, sound, and text for example without use of special hardware.
In each QT file, the basic data unit is referred to as an atom, which includes its data, size, and type information. Further, in each QT file, the minimum unit of data is handled as a sample and a collection of samples is defined as a chunk. A resource atom is a part in which the information necessary for reproducing that file and the information necessary for referencing real data are stored. A data atom is a part in which real data such as video and audio data are stored. QT is disclosed in “INSIDE MACINTOSH: QuickTime (Japanese edition) Addison-Wesley” and other documents.
In the nondestructive editing based on QT, not only the special effects for images, but also the superimposition of characters and graphics may be described in a QT file format in a similar manner. To be more specific, types of special effects, start time, end time, and ID of video on which special effects are performed are recorded to a recording medium in the QT file format. At the time of reproduction, specified types of special effects are performed on the specified video at the specified time, the resultant video being displayed on a display device, thereby reproducing the video provided with the same special effects as those provided by an editor at the time of editing.
Because there are lots of special effects and character fonts, there arises a problem of the inconsistency in the types of installed special effects between the models of reproducing apparatuses. To be more specific, when a recording medium is reproduced by a certain model, video is reproduced with the special effects and character fonts intended by the editor; however, if this recording medium is reproduced by another model, there arises a problem that the video is not reproduced as intended by the editor. In addition, if the video is reproduced by models that cannot recognize the special effects and character fonts used in the video, there arises a problem that the video is reproduced without the special effects and character fonts provided on the video.
Especially, recently, video content is offered by means of various recording media including disk media such as LD, video CD, and DVD in addition to memory cards and network media, so that the problems of the inability of special effect and character font reproduction dependent on the models of reproducing devices are significant.
In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, it may be proposed that the special effects and character fonts be standardized and some of the effects and fonts be specified as essential items. In this approach, however, a problem is expected that, even if there are high-performance reproducing devices including special effects and character fonts other than the essential items, the video content edited by use of the essential items becomes commonplace, eventually losing the chance of using this high performance.
It may also be proposed that the editor performs the editing operation in consideration of some of the models so that the edited video content may be reproduced on particular different models respectively. In this approach, however, there are produced a plurality of edited video content for different models in spite of the same title, thereby pushing up the cost of distribution and delivery. It may also be expected that only the edited video content intended to the models having a large market share be brought on the market, other video content being ignored.